Peter J. Hotez

current project

We are leading policy efforts around a group of chronic and disabling conditions known as the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which are the most common afflictions of the world’s poor. We helped develop the concept of a “rapid impact package” of NTD medicines, which has reached 250 million people in Africa and Asia. In the Americas, we are working in Brazil and Mexico to develop new vaccines for these diseases while shaping a policy around previously hidden NTDs in the United States, especially among the poor in Texas. Finally, our laboratories are developing new NTD vaccines and diagnostics.

biography

Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., is the Baker Institute fellow in disease and poverty. He is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also chief of the Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine and the Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics.

Hotez is an internationally recognized physician-scientist with expertise in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. He leads the only product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm, schistosomiasis and Chagas disease.

He is the author of more than 400 original papers and the acclaimed book “Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases” (ASM Press). Hotez previously served as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and as founding editor-in-chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2011, he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health by the Pan American Health Organization of the World Health Organization. In 2015, the White House and U.S. State Department selected Hotez as a United States science envoy. He obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (Phi Beta Kappa), followed by a Ph.D. in biochemical parasitology from Rockefeller University in 1986 and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987.